It’s all too easy to lose or forget a USB drive – and with it all that data that might be private, commercial, sensitive or embarrassing. Truecrypt is a free, open-source tool that’s (quite) easy to use and robust. A sensible way to protect and secure partitions on hard discs...

AnswerGarden is a “minimalistic feedback tool”. It can easily be used for online brainstorming or as a way of getting quick feedback. It couldn’t be easier to use. First, create an AnswerGarden by entering a topic on the Create New AnswerGarden-page. You’ll then be...

Drag the Printliminator “bookmarklet” to your broswer bar and then you’ll have some simple tools to makes websites print better – it makes webpages print friendly. Once you have it in your browswer, you can click on those parts of the page you don’t want to...

Glogster allows learners to create online, digital, interactive posters – individually or collaboratively. Images, text, videos, and scans/photos of hand written or hand drawn can all be embedded in the poster.
It may be tricky to get in school as it’s often filtered but it may be...

Here’s a great list of techniques to help develop and challenge thinking. As an example (and this is just a few from the list) you can find techniques such as:
Absence Thinking: Think about what is not there.
Art streaming: Keep creating until you get through the blocks.
Assumption...

BubblinoJust researching the possibilities for introducing arduino with this year’s PGCE IT trainees. There’s an increasing interest in a more computer-focused approach to IT in schools and arduino boards may be something to explore. Stumbling through some web resources when I...

Said farewell to my PGCE class yesterday. Sad to say au revoir but pleased that things have gone well for them. The PGCE is a tough year both personally and professionally and they’ve done well. Seven of nine (where have I heard that before?) have got jobs and the other two have...

Not long back after today’s excellent bMobLe2011 conference. Tag words for the conference: friendly, professional, fun, hospitable, informative, collegiate, inspirational, motivational, entertaining, rewarding… you get the idea!
Some highlights for me included the pupil presentations...

Are we already half way through the first year of the second decade of the 21st century? Yep, seems so. Maybe time to take a quick look at the past six months…
2011 began busily at BETT working with Stream2School – a great concept-realisation that allows schools to rent software...

I think I’m going through the stages of grief…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uoL2ApVb3w]
The Background
I attended a meeting a couple of weeks ago in my role as a governor. The meeting brought together head teachers and governors from a local association of schools. Its...

I’ve been a fan of Lulu for a long time. It’s a great service for print-on-demand book making – for making real books of bookstore quality. Even in the age of digital-Kindle, there’s nothing more satisfying than analogue publishing. Two things prompted to mention this...

Timely (there’s an understatement) report from the House of Commons Education Committee calling for a curriculum “to meet needs of all pupils,” and pointing out that a “curriculum which is poorly differentiated for children with different strengths will not hold...

Just completed working on this project.
One of the tasks was to create lesson plans and support materials. It’s trick to get the balance right – trying to write plans that will lead to interesting and effective lessons but also ones that teachers can just pick up and follow. Fun...

The attraction of Tabbloid is its ability to present a summary of feeds in an easily digestible fashion at a frequency of my choosing. It’s very effective for keeping track of RSS feeds. I have similar problem with Twitter. I’m not plugged into Twitter 24-7, and nor do I want to be. So...

Apparently it’s been around for a couple of years but it’s new to me and it’s proving to be a useful tool… Tabbloid is a free web-based service that simply turn sRSS feeds into a PDF newspaper. There’s no need to register but if you do, the PDF can be delivered...

At the beginning of July I gave a keynote presentation at the Kent EIS IT 2010 Conference and, just to illustrate the power and simplicity of Posterous, I posted links and reference materials from the presentation to a specially created Kent EIS IT 2010 Posterous blog. The more I use...

Had heard the news but just seen the obituary by husband John D’Arcy in The Guardian
It wasn’t until some years of teaching English that I came to understand more clearly what Pat was saying about the teaching of English. It wasn’t her fault but mine in being callow, obtuse...

Looking good is Mashpedia. It’s an on-line encyclopaedia that aggregates multiple web feeds (content from different sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, Blogs…) into structured articles and gives a broader view of a topic. Probably not accessible (or not all...

I’ve just been having a quick read through the election manifesto promises of the three main parties. There’s a curious moment in the Labour manifesto, “Cadet forces will move increasingly into state schools” (sounds like a military take over…)
But then I...

Just following some of the (disheartening) parliamentary debate on the proposed The Digital Economy Bill. All seems too rushed, too ill-thought through and untimely (given the election announcement). One of my favourite comments outside of Parliament came from Nick Doody on last week’s...

Prompted by a Tweet from Terry Freedman on change management which pointed to this good article by Doug Edwards, I was reminded about the simplest model of effective change that I’ve ever seen. Prof Tim Brighouse adapted it and used it at some RM conferences a couple of years ago. It...

About

This is an occasionally maintained site for ideas and experiences related to the use of technology in helping to make teaching and learning more fun, more creative and more impactful. There are thousands of excellent blogs on the subject of ICT and learning from brilliant teachers and evangelists – many of these have provided me with ideas, tips and inspiration. This site is one contribution which, from time-to-time, I update with ideas, examples and articles. For more details of who I am and the work I do, please visit my Learning Potential site

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